Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint
| composer = }} Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint (commonly referred to as Ghost Recon Breakpoint) is an upcoming online tactical shooter video game developed by Ubisoft Paris and published by Ubisoft. It is due to be released worldwide on October 4, 2019, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and in November 2019 for the Google Stadia. The game is the eleventh installment in the Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon franchise and is a narrative sequel to the 2017 video game Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands. The game is set in an open world environment called Auroa, a fictional island in the Pacific Ocean. The player takes on the role of Lieutenant Colonel Anthony "Nomad" Perryman, a special forces operative sent to the island to investigate a series of disturbances involving Skell Technology, a military contractor based on Auroa. Gameplay Like its predecessor Wildlands, Breakpoint is a tactical shooter game set in an open world environment. It is played from a third-person perspective and uses an optional first-person view for aiming weapons. Players take on the role of Lieutenant Colonel Anthony "Nomad" Perryman, a member of the Delta Company, First Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group, also known as "Ghosts", a fictional elite special operations unit of the United States Army under the Joint Special Operations Command. The game world, Auroa, is an open world environment that features a variety of landscapes, and these can be used for tactical advantages. For instance, players can slide down rocky terrain and use mud to camouflage themselves. According to Ubisoft, Auroa is larger than the game world featured in Wildlands. Players have a variety of ways to traverse the open world, controlling various air, land and sea vehicles. The game is planned to launch with four character classes. Ubisoft announced plans to make more classes available through post-launch updates. Each class has its own abilities; for example, the panther is a class oriented towards stealth and is able to throw smoke bombs. The player will be able to switch between classes in-game. Players have to gather intelligence in order to progress through the game and can use a variety of methods to approach missions. As in previous titles in the franchise, they can utilize a variety of weapons in combat, with the player's repertoire expanded to include combat drones and rocket launchers to kill enemies. Alternatively, the player can use stealth to silently neutralize opponents. In Breakpoint, players can equip a variety of new weapons and gear such as a blowtorch to cut through fences, sulphur gas grenades to kill enemies, and electromagnetic pulse grenades to disable drones and vehicles. Players can carry corpses away and hide them so that enemies would not become alerted. Fallen enemies will leave loot for players to collect. Fallen teammates can also be carried away so as to revive them safely. Many of the new features added to Breakpoint were developed based on player feedback in Wildlands. The game places a larger emphasis on survival than Wildlands. Enemies will be more numerous and the game will feature a wider range of enemy archetypes. These enemies will have access to many of the same weapons, skills and equipment that are available to the player. Enemies will respond more realistically to player actions and patrols wander the game world searching for the player. Ubisoft introduced these changes to give the player the sense that they were "no longer the most dangerous thing in the game world". Players need to collect different resources in the game's world and use them to craft resources such as bandages. Regular weapon maintenance checks are necessary to keep the weapons functional and the player will need to manage their character's fatigue, hunger and hydration. Failing to do so may slow the player down, limit their ability to regenerate health, or cause them to make more noise while moving. The game uses a regenerative health system whereby the player character naturally recovers health, but serious injuries will impede the player character's performance, as they will start limping and can no longer aim their weapon accurately. Players can set up a bivouac shelter in order to heal themselves. The shelter is also the site where players can manage their weapons and inventory, customize their character and change the character's classes. The game can be played with three other players cooperatively, or in single-player with squadmates Kim "Fury" Hernandez, Benjamin "Fixit" Jones and David "Vasily" Zhang controlled by artificial intelligence. The game was initially announced to have no AI squadmates, but the addition of AI squadmates was later amended as post-release content based due to negative feedback from players. Unlike previous Ghost Recon titles, Breakpoint will require a constant internet connection to play.https://gamerant.com/ghost-recon-breakpoint-internet-connection/ The game's story features dialogue choices. These will not affect the main narrative, but instead enable players to gain intelligence that may aid in their missions. The game also features a mode called "Exploration" that was first used in Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Unlike most open-world games where the player is given an objective marker to guide their progress, Breakpoint s Exploration mode gives the player a rough approximation of the area where an objective may be located. Their approximation can be refined by exploring the world or through investigsting intelligence. A competitive multiplayer mode will be released at launch, and end-of-game content such as raids are set to be introduced post-release. Premise Setting and characters The game is set in the year 2023, four years after the events of Wildlands. The story takes place on Auroa, an island in the South Pacific owned by billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist Jace Skell. Skell is the founder of Skell Technology, a blue chip company producing drones for commercial applications, but the company has also found success as a military contractor developing cutting-edge equipment for the United States government. Skell purchased Auroa with a vision of turning it into a hub for the design, research, development and production of artificial intelligence and drone technology, which he dubs "World 2.0". The island is made up of a series of individual biomes including marine estuaries and wetlands, fjords, arboreal forests, snow-capped mountains and active volcanoes. The main antagonist is former Ghost Cole D. Walker (Jon Bernthal), who has gone rogue after leaving the army. After witnessing his fireteam be slaughtered on a mission in Bolivia, Walker has come to believe that the United States government does not value the lives of its soldiers. A private military contractor named Sentinel has occupied the island under Walker's command while Walker himself is leading a team of soldiers calling themselves the "Wolves". Returning characters from Ghost Recon Wildlands include the members of Nomad's fireteam Dominic "Holt" Moretta, Corey "Weaver" Ward and Rubio "Midas" Delgado. Story Skell Technology starts coming under increased public scrutiny when they are faced with mounting evidence that its products are falling into the hands of corrupt regimes, |name = oracle}} and the island is abruptly cut off from the outside world. The United States government decides to investigate further when a cargo ship, the USS Seay, sinks off the coast of Auroa. The CIA launch Operation Greenstone, deploying a Ghost Recon platoon to re-establish contact with Auroa and determine the circumstances of the Seay s sinking. The insertion ends in disaster when the helicopters carrying the platoon are attacked by a swarm of drones. Nomad is the sole able-bodied survivor of the platoon; of his squadmates, Holt is seriously injured, Weaver is killed and Midas is missing. Development Following the success of Wildlands, the development team expanded to more than one thousand people. For the first time in the series, the setting is fictional as the team felt that they would have more creative freedom regarding the game's world design. The development team created a backstory for the Auroa archipelago dating back eighty million years to make the setting feel more realistic. The game world itself was created through procedural generation with some areas developed from the ground up. An archipelago was chosen for the game's setting as it would make it easier for the developers to add post-game content by adding additional islands and open up new regions for exploration. The development team also listened to players' feedback from Wildlands and introduced a variety of changes players had requested, such as an increased focus on realism and improved vehicle control. The game's premise of the Ghosts being hunted and alone on the island caused Ubisoft to remove AI companions from the game. According to executive producer Nouredine Abboud, Jon Bernthal was hired to voice and provide motion capture for the game's antagonist because the team felt that he had the potential to be a charismatic villain and an effective nemesis for the Ghosts. The name of the game, Breakpoint, reflects the game's narrative in which the Ghosts are on a mission which is on the brink of failure. Emil Daubon, the game's writer, added that the story would explore the themes of "pain, trauma, brotherhood, and mental exhaustion". Release Marketing Ubisoft released a downloadable content (DLC) chapter for Wildlands titled Operation Oracle that introduced the character of Cole D. Walker and focused on Skell Technology. Breakpoint is set to be released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on October 4, 2019. Two DLC chapters, Deep State and Transcendence, are set to be released following the game's launch. Ubisoft also announced at E3 2019 that the game would feature a Terminator-themed crossover as part of its DLC schedule. Reception Pre-release The scale of the game's microtransactions system drew criticism before release. On September 30 2019, a Reddit user posted a number of in-game screenshots to the site which detailed the design of the microtransactions and what items players could buy with real-world money, affecting almost all aspects of gameplay. Concerns were raised that this allowed those to bypass aspects of grinding, particulary as content could be bought as soon as the game began, as well as fears of it being pay-to-win. Conversely, Kotaku argued that while they disagreed with their inclusion, the microtransactions were able to be ignored as all content on offer could still be obtained through hours of playtime and with little difficulty. Notes References External links * Category:Upcoming video games scheduled for 2019 Category:Stadia games Category:PlayStation 4 games Category:Windows games Category:Xbox One games Category:Multiplayer and single-player video games Category:Open world video games Category:Tactical shooter video games Category:Tom Clancy games Category:Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon games Category:Ubisoft games Category:Video games developed in France Category:Video games set in the 2020s